Warner Bros. Pictures
It was the end of a cinematic era when Warner Brothers/New Line/MGM released the final film in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, and if you’re interested in seeing my review of the film itself, you can check that out over at CliqueClack. In a nutshell, the film by itself is not the success as Jackson’s final Lord of the Rings film, which went on to score an Oscar for Best Picture, among other awards heaped upon it. In fact, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a much more successful group of films as far as storytelling and cohesion, but Jackson had three books to work from.
The Hobbit, however, is a slim volume that was bloated into three films with the second, The Desolation of Smaug, being the most successful artistically. The Battle of the Five Armies is at its best in the first ten minutes or so as the film doesn’t miss a beat picking up from where the second ended. Unfortunately, once the dragon is felled, the film needs to rush to gather up some loose ends (not altogether successfully), and plant some seeds for the LOTR trilogy, so as to get to the titular battle which comprises the major portion of the last third of the movie. But along the way we get a terrific performance from Richard Armitage as his Thorin begins to succumb to gold madness, putting all of his dwarf friends (and one Hobbit) in jeopardy. Overall, as a concluding film, it leaves you wanting a bit.
But, with the film now on home video, you can experience it again and actually appreciate it not as an end to a story, but the third chapter in a six-film epic. The home video version of the film comes in several different configurations: 2-Disk DVD, 3-Disk Blu-ray and a 5-Disk Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD package (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided us with the 5-Disk package for review). Each set contains the film on a single disk (the 3D version is spread over two disks) and a bonus disk of Special Features. These include:
- Recruiting the Five Armies (11:39) — A day in the life of the extras, and getting a real sense of family they developed while filming.
- Completing Middle-earth: A Six-Part Saga (9:54), which looks at the narrative threads used to connect The Hobbit films to The Lord of the Rings films, and A Seventeen-Year Journey (8:59) looks at the years it took to bring the Middle-earth saga to the screen with footage from the first trilogy showing Jackson saying he’d never do something like that again. It’s actually quite heartbreaking to see everyone say goodbye. The first of the two features shows how there were many references to The Hobbit buried in the LOTR trilogy, years before Jackson had even planned on making the second trilogy.
- The Last Goodbye: Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (11:18) looks at the writing and recording of the end credits song by Billy Boyd, and Music Video (4:21). The song is lovely and also ties the films to the original trilogy with Boyd lending his voice.
- Trailer #2 (2:33)
- The Desolation of Smaug – Extended Edition Trailer (1:34)
- Credits (1:31) — Credits for special material with voice over audio from cast and crew saying goodbye on their last shooting days.
- New Zealand: Home of Middle Earth – Part 3 (6:07) — One final look at the stunning locations used in filming the epic films with comments from cast and crew. This feature is included on Disk 1 of the 3D Blu-ray, as well as on the stand-alone Blu-ray and DVD.
The Blu-ray image is stunning, as are most Warner presentation, with a crisp 1080p image that properly presents Jackson’s color-graded images and rich, deep blacks. The audio is also top notch (Smaug’s attack on Laketown totally freaked out my cat) with very, very active surrounds from the DTH-HD Master 7.1 Audio track (the DVD features a comparable Dolby Digital 5.1 mix). The 3D is also presented very well, with Jackson using the effect more for depth than things flying off the screen, but even as good as it is, it still doesn’t compare to classic 3D film presentations like Warner’s recently released Kiss Me Kate. The DVD, unfortunately, does not upscale well on an HD television so you will definitely want to go with the Blu-ray version for HD.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD package is a very nice addition to any collection of casual fans of the movie, but while the extras are nice there’s not a lot there for the hardcore fans. We all know that we will see an Extended Edition by Christmas (the Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition contained 9 hours of bonus material!), so the devoted may want to hold out for that … or the eventual complete saga box set that is bound to follow that (and I supposed a six-movie complete epic box set). With the series now complete, though, it may be worth rewatching from the beginning to appreciate the entire series as one complete story.
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